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Guild Wars 1

Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
15,253
Clustering enemies in PvE is not difficult at all in most areas. It is a small AoE but its absurdly devastating.
 

Vyvian

Educated
Joined
Jul 11, 2023
Messages
340
How OP can any single class be in a party of 8? Unless you have specific builds to farm specific areas you're likely not doing exceptional well compared to any other decent build. Ranger is still procing a lot of status across a group of enemies even if it's "weak"
Paragon is utterly broken in all PvE content in such a group.
PvP I dunno, I think they destroyed Paragons in PvP before hitting that old dusty trail.
 
Joined
Dec 24, 2018
Messages
1,898
How OP can any single class be in a party of 8?
Mesmers have 2 things that make them op - fast casting and armor-ignoring damage. Fast casting is super good in general, so a party of 8 primary mesmers is going to do better than a mixed bag of primary casters whose special attributes are overall meh. And *all* mesmer skills ignore armor, which makes them the highest DPS class in the game. Some people have speculated that this is a bug because mesmer skills don't have assigned damage types, like *some* necro skills (which also ignore armor because of it).
I will say this if they wanted to balance mesmer while still keeping it strong, switching all the spells to do Chaos damage (which is armour respecting) would probably do the trick and also be thematically appropriate. I'd still play Mesmer because I love interrupts but it would at the very least tone down the usual damage stack.
 

Hell Swarm

Learned
Joined
Jun 16, 2023
Messages
2,144
How OP can any single class be in a party of 8? Unless you have specific builds to farm specific areas you're likely not doing exceptional well compared to any other decent build. Ranger is still procing a lot of status across a group of enemies even if it's "weak"
Paragon is utterly broken in all PvE content in such a group.
PvP I dunno, I think they destroyed Paragons in PvP before hitting that old dusty trail.
I quite liked Paragorn but it's skills are so boring early on. Having to build up a bar in a ranged class to do half your stuff is tedious.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
15,253
How OP can any single class be in a party of 8?
Mesmers have 2 things that make them op - fast casting and armor-ignoring damage. Fast casting is super good in general, so a party of 8 primary mesmers is going to do better than a mixed bag of primary casters whose special attributes are overall meh. And *all* mesmer skills ignore armor, which makes them the highest DPS class in the game. Some people have speculated that this is a bug because mesmer skills don't have assigned damage types, like *some* necro skills (which also ignore armor because of it).
I will say this if they wanted to balance mesmer while still keeping it strong, switching all the spells to do Chaos damage (which is armour respecting) would probably do the trick and also be thematically appropriate. I'd still play Mesmer because I love interrupts but it would at the very least tone down the usual damage stack.
Yeah, they just need their damage type assigned.
This is not how damage works in GW. There is no such thing as an inherently armor ignoring or armor respecting damage type.

Making them not ignore armor would basically be dumpstering the class for no reason.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,732
Pathfinder: Wrath
This is not how damage works in GW. There is no such thing as an inherently armor ignoring or armor respecting damage type.

Making them not ignore armor would basically be dumpstering the class for no reason.
Almost all damage types respect armor (exceptions are holy and shadow). However, skills which don't have an assigned damage type ignore it by default, look at the handful of Necro skills which don't have assigned damage types that do the same thing. My "evidence" of this being unintended behavior is Obsidian Flame which specifically says it ignores armor, so the devs thought it was a feature of certain skills or damage types, not an entire profession.
 
Joined
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Obsidian flame is just a big exception since virtually all ele skills are armor respecting. OG prophecies skills aren't consistently described at all.

Almost all damage types respect armor (exceptions are holy and shadow)

Almost all physical skills ignore armor and changing your attack element to holy doesn't change it to armor ignoring.

Also it needs to be said that there's a big difference between armor ignoring and enemies simply having 60 armor vs the element. The former is always 100% damage (absent a skill doing something), the latter can be more or less depending on circumstances.

Ever since the "fix" where most enemies armor was made to not scale past level 20 armor ignoring has been far less important. Though there are a few prevalent enemy types that are still a bit inflated
 
Last edited:
Joined
Dec 24, 2018
Messages
1,898
Almost all damage types respect armor (exceptions are holy and shadow)

Almost all physical skills ignore armor
That's because their bonus damage is usually untyped.

Making them not ignore armor would basically be dumpstering the class for no reason.
It would not be dumpstering the class. Mesmer with armour-respecting damage would still be one of the strongest professions in the game. And it's not for no reason. Mesmer right now is so good that even if you made its damage armour-respecting it'd still be top tier - which means that where it is right now is too powerful. I love the Mesmer and I would hate to see it nerfed - getting armour-respecting damage would not be a nerf, it would be balance.
 
Joined
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Messages
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That's because their bonus damage is usually untyped.
It's the same type as the base attack. It's a single packet, a different damage source would be a different packet. You can convert it with greater conflagration or stone striker and then Mantra of Fire/Earth respectively will reduce the damage, since they are the correct element and % damage modifiers work against all damage.

It would not be dumpstering the class. Mesmer with armour-respecting damage would still be one of the strongest professions in the game. And it's not for no reason. Mesmer right now is so good that even if you made its damage armour-respecting it'd still be top tier - which means that where it is right now is too powerful. I love the Mesmer and I would hate to see it nerfed - getting armour-respecting damage would not be a nerf, it would be balance.
I mean Searing Flames would just shit over E-surge mesmers if both were armor respecting. The whole point of Mesmer over Ele for damage is that you ignore armor. Mesmer would still have great disruption and shutdown but most of their damaging skills would be gutted. Imagine Empathy going from 58 damage to 20 on warriors.
 
Joined
Dec 24, 2018
Messages
1,898
That's because their bonus damage is usually untyped.
It's the same type as the base attack. It's a single packet, a different damage source would be a different packet. You can convert it with greater conflagration or stone striker and then Mantra of Fire/Earth respectively will reduce the damage, since they are the correct element and % damage modifiers work against all damage.
Well, I can't find any hard data either way so I'll go with what you're saying. Either way, mesmer damage should be made armour-respecting (or the damage values toned down somewhat).

It would not be dumpstering the class. Mesmer with armour-respecting damage would still be one of the strongest professions in the game. And it's not for no reason. Mesmer right now is so good that even if you made its damage armour-respecting it'd still be top tier - which means that where it is right now is too powerful. I love the Mesmer and I would hate to see it nerfed - getting armour-respecting damage would not be a nerf, it would be balance.
I mean Searing Flames would just shit over E-surge mesmers if both were armor respecting. The whole point of Mesmer over Ele for damage is that you ignore armor. Mesmer would still have great disruption and shutdown but most of their damaging skills would be gutted. Imagine Empathy going from 58 damage to 20 on warriors.

The whole point of mesmer over elementalist should be that you get both respectable damage, and disruption. Not that you get the same or better damage, and disruption - that's too much. It is possible for a human elementalist to out-damage a mesmer with a few builds in the right circumstances, but in general, and especially for AI, mesmer is a better damage dealer than the elementalist. That's not ok. It makes the elementalist pointless. Mesmer had too little damage before, but now has too much, and in typical ArenaNet fashion rather than taking the time to do some incremental changes until things settled at a happy middle ground they just tossed the buffs on, gave themselves a pat on the back, and moved on.

Taking mesmers in your party should be trading off a bit of the damage edge for better suppression of enemies. Not getting suppression of enemies and keeping the same damage and maybe even getting better damage output than before.
 

Rahdulan

Omnibus
Patron
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
5,320
Have I missed someone posting this already?
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedback:Game_updates/20240422

Happy 19th Anniversary!

As many of you know, I've been part-time game director, programmer, janitor, etc., for Guild Wars since 2018. I'm happy to report that starting two weeks ago my time allocated to Guild Wars changed from 10% to 80%. I'm very excited to focus much more of my time on Guild Wars. I'd like to thank the studio leadership for working with me to figure out how to allocate my previous duties and roles to other staff. I'd also like to give a shout-out to other long-tenured staff in the company who have helped me with their knowledge of how and why things work the way they do in Guild Wars.

I'd like to set your expectations appropriately - there is still a lot of work to do on our back-end systems so not everything I do will be visible to players. But I'm happy to say I've recently spent more time in-game and fixed some long-standing problems. The game is still in "maintenance mode" and there are no plans for new content. That said, I hope to improve your overall experience with Guild Wars and I'll see you in game!

Stephen Clarke-Willson Game Director, Guild Wars
 

Kev Inkline

(devious)
Patron
Joined
Nov 17, 2015
Messages
5,478
A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I wonder if it still sells enough to cover one guy for his 80% commitment. I'd assume that's like 80K + overhead. Or maybe it's just part of the product portfolio, through which they can lure people into products with higher mark-up.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,732
Pathfinder: Wrath
Don't really understand the point of this if there's no new content planned whatsoever.
They might be planning something for the 20th anniversary. It still has many fans too because it's a good game. Shocking, I know. There is nothing like it and there won't be in the foreseeable future.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
15,253
I wonder if it still sells enough to cover one guy for his 80% commitment. I'd assume that's like 80K + overhead. Or maybe it's just part of the product portfolio, through which they can lure people into products with higher mark-up.
Probably people buying stuff from the cash shop more than new players.
 
Joined
Dec 24, 2018
Messages
1,898
Been playing a couple professions lately that I normally don't; those being Elementalist and Dervish. The Elementalist I find lacklustre compared to Mesmer, which is my main offensive caster class, but it does have some neat stuff it can do such as chaining a lot of AoE knockdowns with Glyph of Energy, or running surprisingly high damage PBAoE. So far when playing it on Normal Mode with heroes (as I've not finished the campaigns on this one yet) I've found a lot of the time stuff tends to die too fast, especially when running ranged builds, and it's actually one of my main grievances with the class (start casting an expensive spell, heroes kill the enemy before I can finish casting, no recoup of cost via Attune), so I suspect once I finish the campaigns and go on HM (with more durable enemies) I'll enjoy it more.

Dervish, I had actually stopped playing partway through levelling up due to finding the flash enchantment mechanics annoying, but for whatever reason I'm not finding them as annoying this time around. I do like seeing lots of numbers on the screen when getting a good VoS spike off, but I also find that both the build variety and armour variety are somewhat limited. I'm not a fan of the Avatar elites and that's a big chunk of the Dervish's elite selection (the other decent elites are Pious Renewal and Wounding Strike), so to an extent it feels kind of like the Paragon; a 1- or 2-trick pony that's very good but without much variety. That said, I do find VoS fun, so I'm probably going to keep playing at and at least get all the missions done so I can use it for Zaishen dailies. I also do want to try out VoR prot eventually, but I haven't reached the sulfurous wastes yet.

As far as melee professions go I think I still like Warrior best, even if it's generally considered to be the weakest physical these days.

Edit: I also have a ranger on the go, working through LDoA. I've not actually used TaO since it was added.
 
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May 25, 2021
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Location
The western road to Erromon.
Fashion Wars - Muh Ranger. Always loved the Charr Homelands New Ascalon. :smug:
sRUJA3P.jpeg

xIRHwFW.jpeg
 

Black

Arcane
Joined
May 8, 2007
Messages
1,873,126

I love Mesmers so much
 

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